“Game of Thrones” is the perfect show for the Internet. It’s based on a mega-popular book beloved by fantasy and non-fantasy nerds alike. It’s bloody (decapitations!), thrilling (sword fights!), sexy (boobs!), and endlessly GIF-able (Joffrey slaps! Dragons!). And millions of people are illegally downloading it every week.

According to numbers from the BitTorrent-tracking and analysis firm Big Champagne [Ed. Note: that’s a great name for an upper-middle class rapper], the second season of “Game of Thrones” has been downloaded more than 25 million times from public torrent trackers since it began in early April, and its piracy hit a new peak following April 30th’s episode, with more than 2.5 million downloads in a day. (Via)

“GoT” was the second most pirated show of 2011, and its season two numbers are consistently higher than last year’s #1, season six of “Dexter” (what?). The reason why so many are watching the show via illegal means isn’t difficult to figure out, either: their only other option is to have an expensive cable package. The new episodes aren’t available on Hulu, Netflix, or iTunes, and you need cable to access HBO Go. So, as one theory goes, why not download when HBO makes access so difficult? It’s not like the show’s ratings or DVD sales are hurting.

I’m not gonna lie: I didn’t have HBO when season one aired, so I downloaded every episode via the Pirate Bay. But right before season two, I added HBO to my cable package, just for “GoT.” Then I’ll keep it for “The Newsroom,” and then “Boardwalk Empire,” and then…damn, they got me. I’m neither for or against torrenting (I’d be a hypocrite to condemn it), but I do wish HBO would make accessibility to their shows easier, so that everyone can enjoy (if not “enjoy”) the beauty that is Margaery not on a tiny laptop, but on a big TV.

I subscribed to HBO for the Go service (which is pretty great) between season 1 and 2 to get caught up. I feel the same way about torrents as Josh, but I did this mostly because that (in)famous Oatmeal cartoon completely pissed me off.[theoatmeal.com]
“I was totally willing to pay for it, but because I refused to get HBO or wait for the DVD, I totally DESERVED to steal it. Because they couldn’t immediately put it straight into my eyeballs.”
That’s got to be one of the most absurdly entitled things I’ve ever seen.

Groundloop, point well taken, but I was going by the actual 720p releases of Game of Thrones episodes that I see out there, which are, on average, about 1.4 or 1.5 GB apiece (so about 14-15gb for a 10-episode season). There might be someone making smaller-sized 720p files, but I haven’t seen them.

My wife and I picked up cable and HBO just so we could watch season 2. We only had antennae and our Roku for TV. We watched the first season through less than legal means. Unfortunately, now we find more random crap to watch on TV. How can someone watch so much House Hunters??

This is a great example of how Hollywood is just as responsible for torrenting epidemics as the end-user is, if not more so. In this day and age, with all the technology we have and the crazy amount of instant satisfaction available through media, its utterly ridiculous that things like this TV show are locked up tight within a huge, expensive package like HBO. If HBO would sell each individual episode to non-subscribers for a few bucks a pop, that 2.5 million downloads a day on April 30th turns into several million dollars in revenue. But instead they try and lock you into a service/product that, for the most part, you don’t care for, and want to charge you year round for it. Hollywood needs to re-strategize if they want to curb illegal downloading. Passing bills/laws isn’t the answer.

Passing laws and regulations fixes everything. Just look at the war on drugs. It’s IMPOSSIBLE to get any drugs and no one is addicted to anything anymore. Hollywood needs to lobby the government more. I call for a war on pirates.

My personal advice: Don’t torrent them. Instead, find a friend who trusts you and also subscribes to HBO, and barter with them for their password. Then fire up the laptop or XBOX (which has a great HBO Go app), and voila! Offer them some money to split their HBO bill, or offer them the GoT books you’ve already read in return for the shows to watch (plus whatever else is on HBO).

I torrent the shit out of some Game of Thrones. I also subscribe to HBO and have the HBO Go service and all that and i record it on my DVR. Why do I torrent it? Because I want to, and if my internet goes out, then I have a local copy of it I can watch. I hate streaming shit, I’d much rather have a download of it, and since I subscribe and watch and record, I view DLing an episode as no different than if I was to make my own file from my recording.

Illegal “downloading”? I thought the illicit act was uploading the data to other users. After all, the issue with copyright violations is making the offending copy, which you can only do when you already have access to said material. Downloading is just receiving that material, not copying it.

I guess the relevant part is “if you do buy an illegal backup copy, you will be engaging in copyright infringement if you load that illegal copy onto your computer, i.e., the unauthorized reproduction of the infringing computer program into memory.”

So, you can legally buy all the pirate DVDs you want, so long as you’re not the one making them or distributing them, and you never actually watch them?

I’m not exactly sure. I’d have to do a bunch of research that I don’t feel like doing, but at the very least I assume they could confiscate lot of your shit. And even if you made an awesome fancy legal argument about it, courts still aren’t exactly going to be tickled if you have a house full of pirated stuff.

Ironically, I cannot show you the case law on this issue w/o violating Westlaw’s copyright. Consumption or viewing the copyrighted work is not infringement, but the purchase or downloading of an infringing work is an act of infringement. If you are at a friend’s house watching his pirated copy of GoT, then you are ok; however your friend is in violation of US copyright law.

I live in Frankfurt, could only et it officially in German( or maybe it was Dathraki).
So I watched the episodes on line streaming. I bought the box set of series 1 when it came out..
But still watch it on line even series 1 as the box set I’d spread over 5 feckin disks.
The entertainment industry still don’t get. We will pay to watch decent content, but
If we have to jump through pointless hoops we won’t and go the (free) streaming option.
I got the Dark. Knight app . It’s 6.99 . I can stream the whole movie to my
iPad whenever I want. This is the way forward. We don’t need to physically own
The item but the right to watch it where we want and how we want.
.. ANC will someone please tell md how the ravens know where to go ???

With messenger birds, they are bred for their ‘homing’ instinct. So they’d raise a bird in kings landing, then ship it up to winterfell.
When you want to send a message to King’s landing, you tie it to your bird that was born, raised and shipped up from kings landing. Let it go, and it goes home.

I blame Comcast. I’m sure HBO would have some HuluPlus style system on their site if it were completely up to them. Sadly, because they need to use the cable providers to deliver their content (traditionally speaking) they need to play ball with the likes of Comcast. They of course, will do everything they can to make sure people NEED to go through them… It’s the same reason they are trying to get hulu to be accessible by cable subscription only.
Anything they can do to get/keep their finger in the pie.

After years and years of being forced into these stupid jumbo cable packages – with the millions of hours of television I’m paying for but will never watch – I have already payed enough to make up for any DLing I do.

Those exact words right there send a bitter chill through every cable exec’s bones. If time Warner, comcast and charter et al weren’t on their knees throwing money at hbo and espn they would def worked out some sort of subscription model by now.
This seems relevant:[warmingglow.uproxx.com]

If you do something voluntary and for entertainment purposes, such as torrenting, then you’re for it. There is no real ambiguity there. You are claiming you’re neutral. If you’re neutral, you don’t do it but you don’t campaign against it or have any real opinion either way. If you do it but still have no strong opinion, then you’re not neutral, you for it. The end.

Honestly i would pay HBO 10-15 bucks a month. I wont however pay for cable channels I do not watch to gain access to paying them 15.99 a month. The fact they are in bed with cable providers HURTS them.

I highly doubt that there is a 1:1 download-to-watch ratio with these Bittorrented shows, which articles like this seem to imply. When music piracy was big, I would download a much larger amount of music than I’d ever actually listen to. I suspect that the numbers are similarly inflated.

I would pay per episode at a reasonable price or subscribe to Hulu or something if it was on there, but no way in hell am I getting cable and subscribing to HBO just to watch this show. I don’t watch enough TV to justify the costs. Are you listening HBO??

If HBO would charge just for that one show, lets say $10 or $12 for season to stream live on their website they would make a minimum of probably $120 million and that easily on the low end. I feel it could be hundreds of millions. Get the money while its there. Maybe that could be the way around the big cable companies just charge for one show at a time.